De groene kater nu ook in 'The Times'!
In eerdere 'postings' meldde ik dat verschillende internationale kwaliteitsbladen zich eindelijk kritischer zijn gaan opstellen ten aanzien van de klimaathype en 'groen' meer in het algemeen. Het ging om 'The Economist', 'Der Spiegel', de 'Neue Zürcher Zeitung', de 'Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung', de 'Weltwoche', 'Jyllands Posten' en 'Svenska Dabladet'. Nu komt ook 'The Times' met een uiterst scherp artikel van de hand van Tim Montgomerie: 'The Greens Cant Defy Gravity. They Are Finished'.
The cash wasted on failed global warming policies would be better spent on tackling the problems faced by the poor.
Seven years ago, pulled along by huskies, David Cameron visited a Norwegian glacier. Vote blue, he implored, and go green. One year later Kevin Rudd became Prime Minister of Australia after identifying climate change as the greatest moral challenge of our time. Climate change campaigners interpreted his victory as one of seismic importance and governments across Europe rushed to pour money into the renewable energy sector.
Then in 2008 along came Barack Obama. The wicked George W. Bush was replaced with a president who promised to stop global warming. Hurrah! And, for a period, Mr Obama seemed determined to deliver. Here, after all, was the president, some would have us believe, who could walk on water.
One year into his blessed reign he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize without having secured peace in any part of the world. He was top of the pops in global opinion surveys. Just about every world leader wanted to be photographed alongside him.
Super-Obamas great opportunity to save the planet came in 2009 at the Copenhagen climate change summit. He was at the height of his political powers. His Democratic party controlled all of Washington: the presidency, the House of Representatives and the Senate. And yet Copenhagen ended in the same way as almost every other climate change summit of recent times: in failure.
Having failed to persuade members of his own party to cut greenhouse gas emissions, Mr Obama also failed to persuade the governments of New Delhi, Beijing and Brasília.
The writing may have been on the wall in 2009, but the green movement has soldiered on. Theirs, they believed, was a moral mission of such importance that nothing would or should get in their way. Whatever the economic, social or political price they were determined to succeed. The doubts of sceptics like me could always be ignored, but when the politicians who once championed green politics are in retreat it is perhaps time for even ecological diehards to get real. ...
The heavy cost of green energy policies might have been justifiable if they had delivered results, but they havent. Since the Kyoto treaty on climate change, global emissions have continued to rise. Since 1990 they have increased by about 50 per cent. Chinas increase in emissions has been 25 times greater than the reduction by the EUs core nations. In so far as Europe has actually met its environmental obligations it has only done so by exporting industrial capacity (and jobs). Once the environmental impact of imported goods has been added to its carbon footprint Europe has clearly failed to keep its environmental promises. ...
Green enthusiasts are kidding themselves if they blame the global economic slump for the failure of climate change policies. Their policies were always an attempt to defy economic gravity. No half-decent politician in any part of the developing world was ever going to delay economic progress by embracing expensive energy sources. Any policies that prevent a clinic in India from being able to refrigerate medicines or a student in China from being able to read at night were always destined to fail. ...
Two decades of green policies havent just failed to stop global warming. [Noot HL: Ja, dat klopt. Maar de opwarming is wèl uit zichzelf gestopt.] Old age pensioners in Britain and in other developed countries have been forced to bear electricity bills inflated by renewable subsidies. Blue-collar workers have lost their jobs as energy-intensive manufacturing companies have relocated overseas. Beautiful landscapes have been ruined by bird-chopping wind turbines. ...
Normaal gesproken worden dit soort signalen van buitenlandse kwaliteitsmedia wel opgepikt in Nederland. Maar dat is tot op heden niet het geval. Met uitzondering van Elsevier, verkeert het gros van de Nederlandse media nog steeds stevig in de greep van de klimaathype en groen.
Heinrich Heine zei het al: 'Als de wereld vergaat, dan ga ik naar Nederland. Want daar gebeurt alles altijd vijftig jaar later.'
Voor mijn eerdere DDS-bijdragen, zie
hier.